EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Second place, five points behind the winner. ♭37℃ stands in the hall as the book that opened a three-year run in which Tsukino Jogi's name sat at or near the top of the readers' poll.

Set in a high school, it is a comic story in the chōkyō, or "training", genre, built on the master-and-servant relationship between Mutsumi, a cool and aloof honour student, and the classmate who has found something to hold over her. Before long another classmate and his twin sister are drawn in, and the balance of power among the four keeps shifting.

No contemporary reviews have survived. Later readers single out the forward-looking temperament of the bespectacled heroine and the comedy struck from the back-and-forth of two couples, and they find the aftertaste gentle in spite of the subject. Nine years on, in a retrospective vote on a message board, there were still readers who put this book forward as the artist's signature work.

It was the third book by Tsukino, who had debuted in 1999, and the first with Core Magazine. The chapters ran in COMIC Megastore, and a sequel, ♭38℃ Loveberry Twins, followed in 2004.

A two-volume OVA was made from the following year on, and in 2010 Fantagraphics' adult imprint Eros Comix published an English edition under the title Too Hot to Handle. In the Eromanga Taisho, Tsukino went on to take first place for 2003 and again for 2004, the latter decided in a re-run vote held in 2008. The print edition dates from 2002; 2014, the year on the hall's roster, is that of the DLsite digital release. It ranks 141st in the commercial hall.